Technocracy Inc.
The name Technocracy Incorporated refers to an organisation formed in 1933 in the United States of America. The organisation promotes a version of technocracy and a technocratic plan for the North American continent. Formed in 1933, it continues to exist today as the sole representative of the technocracy movement in the United States.
History
The organisation was formed in 1933 from former members of the Technical Alliance, including Howard Scott and Dr. M. King Hubbert. The organisation was one of a number of technocratic organisation to form in 1933, such as the Continental Congress.[1] The organisation was at its height during the 1930s under the leadership of Howard Scott, around whom a personality cult was built. However, discontent with Scott’s leadership lead to a split in the movement during the 1940s,[2] but the resulting breakaway group soon failed. Technocracy Inc. organised a large demonstration in 1947 but its membership began to decline. Scott remained its leader and chief engineer until his death in 1970. The organisation still exists, with its HQ in Ferndale, WA, USA.
Ideas
The organisation aims to apply science to society and promotes a technocratic plan based around a hierarchy of functional sequences to administer the North American continent, with a board of directors forming the overall governing body. Each functional sequence would have a technical area to administer, such as health, production, defence, and research.
The organisation promotes a replacement for money. The organisation takes a thermal dynamic interpretation of society, based on the observation that energy forms the lowest common denominator to all work. This leads Technocracy Inc. to promote an energy accounting system, where each citizen would have an allocation of energy certificates representing the production capacity available. These would be used to allocate energy to the production of desired goods.
The organisation proposes an organisation of the American continents centred on North America, and including Central America, and the Caribbean, as well as parts of South America and Greenland as the administrative area, each of which they refer to as a Technate. Within this area, the organisation proposes that people will live within urbanates. The term urbanate refers to the organisation’s plan for a replacement of existing cities.
Some of the ideas presented by the Technocracy overlap with Edward Bellamy's works, such as equal income and removal of political government found in Looking Backward and Equality. The use of energy also has similarities to the works of British chemist Professor Fredrick Soddy.
References
- ↑ Akin, William E. (1977). Technocracy and the American Dream: The Technocrat Movement, 1900-1941. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-03110-5.
- ↑ Elsner, jr., Henry (1967). The Technocrats: Prophets of Automation. Syracuse University.